We caught up with Alana and her partner, who are both teachers from the South Coast of England. They both love the outdoors and are excited to have invested in a TentBox at the start of 2020, which has proven to be one of the best decisions they’ve ever made! With amazing long holiday breaks, the pair are able to get away on spontaneous trips around the UK, where they go wherever the wind takes them. If you’re interested in learning more about the couple, you can follow their blog – Our Wild Plans – to keep up to date with their TentBox adventures!
What TentBox Do You Have?
We’ve got the TentBox Classic, which we purchased in May 2020. We haven’t had it that long, but we’ve already been on some amazing adventures. We chose the TentBox because it suits our values and lifestyle – we both the love outdoors and going on spontaneous trips. We’re both teachers, which means lots of time off to take TentBox trips and travel the UK.
Why Do You Love Your TentBox?
Spontaneous trips! We love being able to get away with the tent on our roof so easily. We don’t plan any of our trips, we just follow the sun and go wherever we feel like it at the time. That’s how we like to travel. We’ve been on van trips before and found that moving the bed and faffing etc is hard. We wanted an easier option, and TentBox is just that. We love that the TentBox just pops up and is also good for storage. Also, with vans you can find that your travel speed is slow, but with the TentBox on your roof you can still drive fast and it doesn’t slow you down or impact your driving.
School Holidays: 6 Week Trip
Over the last school holidays, we were able to make a UK trip with the TentBox. We travelled up and down the country for 6 weeks, stopping off wherever we felt like it on the way! The top 3 places to visit from that trip were:
Norfolk
We absolutely loved Norfolk and would definitely recommend. We saw every hour the sun gave us – including every sunset and sunrise. We surfed and relaxed, spent so much time outdoors and even did some seal spotting. We loved doing all of this from the comfort of the TentBox. Norfolk has some amazing National Trust spots that are a must visit!
North Devon
This was primarily a surfing stop, but we loved exploring the area. I was a bit worried about surfing and doing the sandy trips and then sleeping in the TentBox but actually it was so easy. The car got a bit chaotic but we were able to keep the TentBox clean and sand free. It suited our surf trip perfectly.
Scotland
Scotland was probably our favourite TentBox trip. We stopped in Cumbria on the way and found some great sunset spots and wild swimming spots too, which was lovely. When we got up to Scotland we went to the Isle of Skye, and we’d never been to Scotland before so we found it was just absolutely beautiful. We caught a ferry to the Isle of Harris in the Outer Hebrides and it was stunning – it was the highlight of our summer. We loved that it was just us and the TentBox and there was no one else around. Be warned though: the midges in the Outer Hebrides are aggressive!! Our TentBox stood up well in the midges storms. We were so glad that we had the TentBox that was easy to put up and down or we would have been bitten.
TentBox Top Tips
Our top tips for a seamless TentBox trip are:
- Always have earplugs and eye masks. Animals can be noisey!
- Use the app Park4Night, as it makes it much easier to wild camp
- Put your shoes on the roof of the car, under the TentBox so you don’t have to make the TentBox dirty but you can also access your shoes really easily.
- Try to park on level ground. Not an essential, but if you do sleep on a slope you probably will find it harder to get a good night’s sleep
- I’m short so we keep a little stool in the car so that when I’m trying to get stuff in and out of the TentBox it just makes it a bit easier
